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Sales Strategies
Selling Your Personal Work
By Maria Piscopo

Selling Your Personal Work

Another question that always comes up in my workshops and seminars is, "How can I sell the work I love to do?" Many creative professionals struggle with this question for years before hitting on the answer to finding a market for their personal work. Here is one success story! From the beginning of his photography career twenty two years ago, John Connell (http://www.johnconnell.com) always looked at the world in an uncommon way. Most clients did not need the unusual or unexpected style of his personal work. Connell found his personal work had a strong style he describes as "distilling and isolating the kinetic energy of elements in any image and presenting them in a different context". Connell works with commercial photography clients, shooting architectural, lifestyle and locations and has a special talent for shooting "environments", a variety that includes homes, restaurants, golf courses and corporate offices. Since he thrives on his personal work, his challenge was to find the transition point and the clients.

Connell began to see the development of his style on his first trip to Europe in 1980. Shooting with the first generation of the Olympus XA compact camera, he captured some evocative images for his portfolio of personal work. Investing his energy into his commercial business, he gave little thought about selling his personal work until 1990. On a self-assignment photo trip to Indio, California with fellow photographer Jay Hyma, they challenged themselves to find something interesting enough to photograph in a rundown desert town. It was a trip that paid off generously. The body of images that Connell brought back provided stock photography sales, new images for his commercial portfolio and a chance for his first fine art photography exhibit.

These images helped create the portfolio of personal work that brought him the plum assignment of shooting for the Winter Olympics in Norway in 1992. According to Connell, "This trip to Norway was the first time I could really "see" the art in my photographs. After years of shooting 4x5 format, it was also the first time I really embraced the 35mm format. My second photo assignment to Norway in 1993 reaffirmed this feeling." In 1992, after his first show at La Roche gallery (Newport Beach, California) and several small one-man exhibitions in local restaurants, Connell continued to use his art prints as gifts and promotions to friends and clients. His persistence finally paid off in 1999 with two important corporate fine art photography sales that gave the marketing of his personal work new momentum.

Catherine Seltz, of Seltz Art Consulting, handled one of these large projects and adds, "As art consultants to the corporate community we are constantly looking for new and innovative work to place in our projects. When John Connell is behind the camera, his photography is shot with a unique approach, whether it is a palm tree, a building or a landscape. He has an exquisite eye for color, texture and detail. Also, corporations are always interested in supporting a local artist with so much talent so John Connell was a perfect fit."

In March 2002, an exhibition of twenty-five of his images was presented in a one-man show in Newport Beach, California. The "Crystal Cove" project is a story of a California beach community nearly 80 years old and now closed. Connell started capturing as much of Crystal Cove as possible while the families were still in residence. His images, crossing the line between photographs and paintings, show the beautiful and natural environment as well as the unique architecture found at Crystal Cove. For the future, Connell is planning more fine art print sales and becoming his own publisher of both the prints and cards.

As a creative professional, you too can make your dream a reality by finding your passion and following it with the same perseverance. Connell not only found a market for his personal work but has discovered that "the fine art of commercial photography" in not an oxymoron.